If you live in or are thinking of moving to a home in Montgomery County you may already know that Montgomery County is nationally recognized as being a leader in environmental initiatives. Currently the county was chosen to receive technical assistance on both growth and development initiatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s and the Smart Growth Implementation Program.
Those who own Montgomery County real estate should be extremely proud since their community was chosen out of the hundreds that applied. Currently the County’s goal for this money is to allocate it to generating solutions which are good for the environment, local business, as well as for the people who live work or travel through this county’s borders. So if you live or own any real estate in Montgomery County, the goal of this program is to focus on helping the county look at and address specific issues which are identified in the Climate Protection Plan. Some of these issues include how to better forecast the greenhouse gas effects of land use changes and reduce transportation related greenhouse gas emissions. Since Montgomery County was one of the four areas chosen, it will be receiving assistance from not only the EPA but also the DOT and HUD. This will allow the County to not only advance its Smart Growth program but also advance the execution of the County’s Climate Protection Plan, and provide resources and guidelines to other jurisdictions that may have similar issues.
Some interesting historical facts to note about Montgomery County are that its first Climate Protection Plan was started by the Sustainable Working Group in January of 2009. This first plan was developed to focus on seven different areas which included: renewable energy, residential building energy efficiency, commercial multi family and public building energy efficiency, transportation, forestry and agriculture, long term planning, and education and outreach. Out of these seven areas the plan was able to come up with 58 different recommendations. Another very interesting fact is that the Environmental Protection Agency developed its Smart Growth Implementation Assistance Program in 2005. This was due to communities asking for help in achieving development goals in smart growth techniques. This program allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to provide assistance to areas which are planning to grow but want to maintain or improve environmental and economic progress as well as aid in quality of life.
Posted by: Editor
Categories:
